Table of Contents
LIFE BEGINS ON FRIDAY
Foreword
Characters
Friday, 19 December: An Eventful Day
Saturday, 20 December: Commotion
Sunday, 21 December: A good day. With some exceptions...
Monday, 22 December: A Difficult Beginning to the Week
Tuesday, 23 December: The Chance Occurence
Wednesday, 24 December: Christmas Eve
Thursday, 25 December: Presents
Friday, 26 December: News
Saturday, 27 December: Visiting
Sunday, 28 December: Press Review
Monday, 29 December: Time Passes
Tuesday, 30 December: Time Stands Still
Wednesday, 31 December: Future and Past
Epilogue
Appendices.
Afterword: A Thing of Beauty by Mircea Cărtărescu
The Author
The Translator
Ioana Pârvulescu
LIFE BEGINS ON FRIDAY
Translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth
For what you want is that life, and this,
and another – you want them all.
Miguel de Unamuno, July 1906
First published in 2016 by
Istros Books
London, United Kingdom www.istrosbooks.com
First published as Viaţa începe vineri, Editura Humanitas, Romania, 2009
Copyright © Ioana Pârvulescu, 2016
The right of Ioana Pârvulescu to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Translation copyright © Alistair Ian Blyth
Cover design and typesetting: Davor Pukljak, www.frontispis.hr
ISBN: 978-1-908236-29-6 (printed edition)
ISBN: 978-1-908236-72-2 (MOBI edition)
ISBN: 978-1-908236-68-5 (e-PUB edition)
Istros Books wishes to acknowledge the financial support granted by the Romanian Cultural Institute
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Foreword
For a few years before 1900 the days were capacious. The people thrummed like telegraph wires. They were optimistic and believed, as never before and never again thereafter, in the power of science, in progress and the future. This is why the New Year was the most important time for them: the ever-renewed beginning of the future.
The texture of the world permitted every mad notion and often the mad notions became reality.
Romania was in Europe, and her capital was now a cosmopolitan city, which was making great efforts to become organized and civilised. In Bucharest, as every period document attests, you never had a chance to be bored, night or day.
Sensitive souls were fearful of unknown dangers. A man fended off electric light with his cane. A woman obstinately refused to let her son take her photograph, although she allowed her portrait to be painted. Neuroses were transformed into poetry; pain and opium went hand in hand. Tuberculosis, syphilis and dirt either killed or left deep wounds in body and soul. Evil had not vanished from the world, and ignoring it was not the best method of preparing for the future. There were people who fought it.
The newspapers had become aware of their own power and it was already possible to die for the written word. And already the written word betrayed them. Money was a problem, but not an end in itself, and there were plenty of people prepared to sacrifice all their money for the sake of a beautiful idea. Children were precocious in imitating grown-ups, grown-ups sometimes behaved like children, and curiosity about life was a joy that did not vanish at any age.
Before 1900, people believed that God desired their immortality, in the most palpable sense of the word. Nothing seemed impossible and nor was it. Every utopia was permitted. And playing with time was always the most beautiful utopia. Apart from that, people were quite similar in every respect to those who came before them and those who came after them.
For a few years before 1900 the days were capacious and people dreamed of our world.
They dreamed of us.
Characters
Dan Creţu or Dan Kretzu, 43, a stranger found unconscious in a forest at the edge of Bucharest
The Margulis family:
— Leon, physician, 47
— Agatha, his wife, 42
— Iulia, their daughter, 21
— Jacques (Iacob), their son, 10
Nicu (Niculae Stanciu, Nicuşor), 8, courier for Universul newspaper, the character who links all the other characters
Costache Boerescu, Chief of Public Security, deputy to the Prefect of Police, a friend of Leon and Agatha Margulis since their youth
General Ion Algiu, former Prefect of Police, friend of Costache Boerescu
Caton Lecca, current Prefect of Police
The Livezeanu family:
— Alexandru, aristocrat, homme à femmes
— Mihai (Mişu), studying Medicine in Paris
— Marioara, divorced, with three children, including twins Anica and Ștefan
— Maria and Hristea, parents of the above
Nicu’s mother, mentally ill washerwoman
Staff of Universul newspaper:
— Old man Cercel, the porter
— Neculai Procopiu, 43, the longest-serving newspaperman at Universul
— The brothers Mirto: Peppin, translator, proof reader, optimist, endowed with an operatic singing voice, and Pavel (Păvălucă), editor, introvert, pessimist, writing a novel
vThe Director, Italian Luigi Cazzavilan
Petre, coachman of Inger the pastry maker
Dr Rosenberg, runs the House of Health establishment on Strada Teilor (Lindens Street)
Mr and Mrs Movileanu, lawyer and his wife, resident on Strada Teilor
Epiharia, devout woman who frequents the Icoanei Church, preparing to become a nun
Fane, alias the Ringster, crook
Episodic characters
George Lahovary, newspaperman, director of the French-language L’Indépendance Roumaine, slain in a duel at the age of 43 by Nicu Filipescu (former Mayor of Bucharest, who ordered the demolition of the Sărindar Church)
Metropolitan Ghenadie, involved in a scandal culminating in the theft of a miracle-working icon
Dimitrie Gerota, physician, friend of Dr Margulis
Vasilica, Iulia’s cousin
Marwan, photographer for Universul
Elena Turnescu, widow of an eminent surgeon, involved in charitable works
Signor Giuseppe, Italian neighbour of the Margulis family
Otto, ethnic German from Transylvania who has come to the capital to work as a church painter
The wounded young aristocrat (Rareş-Ochiu-Zănoagă)
Coachmen: Yevdoshka (Russian Old Believer), Budacu and Ilie (in the employ of the Police)
Toader, servant of the Livezeanu family
Margareta, one of Alexandru Livezeanu’s mistresses
Pet animals
Liza, Costache’s old dog, Lord, General Algiu’s Borzoi hound,
Fira the cow, a fridge magnet, Speckle, Nicu’s pigeon
Unconventional characters
Bucharest, Capital of Romania
Time
Friday, 19 December: An Eventful Day
1.
I like to read in the carriage. Mama takes me to task; Papa, who never forgets, not even en famille, that he is Dr Leon Margulis, primary physician with a surgery behind the National Theatre, says that I will ruin
my eyes and give birth to near-sighted children. But I am obstinate and still bring a book with me. Back in their day they probably had the time to read and do lots of other things, but we youngsters have to dole out our hours with care. I could hardly wait to find out what Becky would get up to next in Vanity Fair. Although truth to tell, I think that I am more like that silly Amelia, and I shall end up loving some rascal all my life. Today I had no luck with my reading: firstly, because my hands were frozen; and then, no sooner did we climb into the carriage than Mama and Papa, chopping the subject as finely as our cook does the parsley, began to dissect the case of the unidentified man whom Petre found lying in the snow this morning, in a field near the Băneasa woods and lakes. He was taken to the Prefecture of Police and placed under arrest. Mama, who is up to date on absolutely everything, says he is a fugitive from the madhouse and that he must have been driven insane by too much learning. And here she gave me a minatory look: ‘It is high time that Iulia decided on a decent man to marry.’
Papa examined the stranger at the request of Costache, our friend from the Police, and said that he was not a vagrant, despite his wearing unbelievably odd clothes. Perhaps he is a clown from the circus. He is otherwise clean and has no “physiological” flaws apart from the fact that he does sometimes talk in a garbled way. But if he is a madman, then he is a cultivated madman; he “couches his words nicely”. But when Papa asked him whether he had tuberculosis, the man gave him a scornful look, as if infuriated, and answered cuttingly: ‘You’re a two-bit actor!’ Papa replied, as gravely as he does whatever the situation: ‘Sir, if you please, I am not an actor, but a physician!’ He added that his lungs sounded a little congested, that he was very pale, but that he could not find any serious illness. The man calmed down and said that he would like to smoke. Papa, who is against the habit, nonetheless brought him some fine tobacco and rolling papers from Mr Costache’s desk, but said that the man under arrest, after giving him a savage glance, quite simply turned his back on him. He is ill bred! They retained his valise for examination, and a silver box, like a safe, which indicates that he might be a money forger, but they released him after keeping him under arrest for only an hour, following a brief interrogation by Mr Costache. On finding himself free, he straightaway made himself scarce. But the best coachman in the police force was assigned to follow him unobtrusively.
‘How old is he?’ asked mother, her favourite question.
‘He declares himself forty-three. Well, that would mean he was four years younger than me, but I say he’s lying. I reckon he is no older than thirty or thirty-five. He says that he is a journalist and that he was born here. Dan Kretzu. What surprised me was that he was completely shaven. You see this only with actors who play the rôles of women. Hmm!’ And here Papa stroked the thin blond tuft of his beard, as wispy as maize silk, the cause of a lifetime’s suffering.
‘We shall find out more tomorrow, at dinner, because I have invited Mr Costache.’
Papa noticed that my face was flushed and immediately put his hand to my forehead to see whether I had a temperature. As far as he is concerned, all things have solid, bodily causes. He will not hear of the soul. Although Mama continued to interrogate him for a while, I preferred to take off one glove, now that my hands had warmed up, and to return to Becky. What I like about her is that exactly like me she can speak French and English. What I do not like about her is that exactly like me she has green eyes. I would have liked hazel eyes, the same as Jacques, and blond hair, the same as Becky, but it would seem the factory did not have that model in stock twenty-one years ago, and so I must content myself with black hair. How is it that from the same parents, both with hazel eyes, one child can turn out the same as them, while the other has green or blue eyes? I wish to finish the book by New Year, and so I shall try to write in my diary more seldom. There are still twelve days and a few hours to go.
2.
The people of Bucharest were having a good day. It had snowed, there were still twelve days till the end of the year, and twelve hours till the end of the day. The whiteness, which stretched from one end of the city to the other, from the Cotroceni Palace to the Obor district, and from the Șerban Vodă Cemetery to the flower-beds on the Chaussée, and then onward, into the horizon, was melting in the afternoon sun. The icicles looked as if they were coated in oil and here and there were beginning to drip onto the heads of the passers-by. The streets were quite busy, as they always were on the days before Christmas. Looking up, lest he get wet, Nicu fell head first into the snow, and was as annoyed as when he woke up with his face pressed to the sheet.
‘Looks like you’ve taken another tumble, young man!’ said the boy loudly, shaking off his red commissary’s cap. ‘I’ve told you time after time to look where you step,’ he grumbled in his small voice, but with the tone of a bad-tempered old man. Since the year before, when he started to attend school, that pedantic tone had stuck to his tongue and he could not rid himself of it. But he had been in the habit of talking to himself for as long as he could remember, because to his great misfortune and unlike other children, he had no siblings. He would have been happy to have even a sister, at a pinch.
He dusted the snow off his coat, cast a glance of vexation at the patch of ice on which he had slipped, and at a trot arrived under the clock with the mechanical soldier above the door of L’Indépnedance Roumaine newspaper offices. At twelve on the dot, the chimes began to sound. Nicu always tried to be in time to see the soldier. It was not easy, because he had to tell the time by the sun and the length of the shadows. This time the lad’s attention was caught by something else. On the ground, right in front of him, was a splendid icicle, more than a metre long, perfect for a sword. He picked it up and stroked its slightly rippled surface, oblivious to the chill of the ice. Holding it in both hands, he lowered it to his hip, raised it, still in a two-handed grip, and with a roar made a swordsman’s lunge at an unseen enemy. Unfortunately, the icicle, probably inured to the greater peace and quiet at the edge of the roof, struck where it ought not to: to a man in military uniform, holding a silver-handled cane; a gentleman of middling height who was just emerging through the door beneath the clock. He was the Prefect of Police’s right-hand man: the Chief of Public Security, Costache Boerescu, a man always in a hurry, his short legs rapidly scything the air. In that period he visited the Frenchmen’s newspaper two or three times a day, ever since the director, Mr Lahovary, had been slain in a duel by “that pig-headed Filipescu,” the director of the Epoca newspaper. And so the policeman was in the mood for anything but a duel, irritated as he was by the investigation, which was going nowhere, and by voices from the press, who were persecuting him ever more sorely. He could no longer stand newspapermen: when he did something good, they ignored him, but when he failed to solve some matter swiftly enough, they jumped on him and blackened his name using his own words, but truncating and turning them upside down. Whenever he had occasion and only men were present, he would cool off by calling the press a “painted whore.” Otherwise, he lived alone, and the brothel at Stone Cross had special reduced rates for him, should he so desire. He had visited the establishment both as a policeman and as a customer.
The cursed child ran off before the policeman could grab him by the ear. He made a suicidal dash across the road, dodging the carriages and sleighs, in the direction of Sărindar, not before being cursed by a number of coachmen heading in a column towards the Capșa restaurant, then by those on the other side, on their way towards the Dâmbovița River; one after the other, they had to pull on their reins, lest they crash into each other. The lad looked behind him at the same instant that the copper waved his stick at him threateningly. Nicu then put the incident out of his mind and headed towards the Prefecture, a few minutes’ walk away.
‘You were almost done for there, young man. Mr Costache won’t forget you, he never forgets anything, and he’s as cunning as a snake, he is. You’ve been getting into nothing but scrapes today,’ said the lad, addressing a larg
e snow-laden bush that grew slantwise in a shady spot next to a wall. Some sparrows were hopping with abrupt, bullet-like movements from one branch to another, then lingering a little, touching the thick whiteness of the snow with their plump bellies, and scattering the flakes, before moving to another storey of the bush, as if it were a house. Nicu wondered why they moved around so much, since they did not seem to be following or looking for anything, unlike him. He had a precise goal, which loomed tall in front of him: the entrance of Universul, Bucharest’s most read newspaper. Granted, the men from Adevĕrul said otherwise, but they said everything otherwise. He stepped forward, having swiftly shaken all the sparrows off the bush.
He entered by the door on the left. The doorman shook his hand as if he was a grown-up. Old man Cercel told him that he would have to wait: the parcels had not yet been brought from the “distribution bee-oo-row.” Nicu sat down in his usual place. He was most satisfied. Conversations with old man Cercel were always instructive, because the doorman read the paper every day and kept him up to date with the news. Nicu asked him whether he had decided to play the big New Year’s lottery; the jackpot was ten thousand lei. Six numbers had to be chosen, and the lad had asked to try his luck, without any claim on the prize (although the money would not have gone amiss), just so that he could lend a helping hand. Nicu knew that as far as he was concerned, his choice was nine and eight, because next year would be 1898, and the doorman would choose the remaining numbers, except that he would make his mind up one day, only to change it the next. Old man Cercel replied yet again that it was no joking matter and he would have to think carefully. From today’s paper he had a news item even better than the one about Jack the Ripper, who had thitherto reigned supreme over the headlines.
The doorman picked up Universul, held it rather a long way from his eyes, and read slowly, syllabically: “Sundry items. From Bor-del-... Bor-der-and... Bor-der-land magazine. The planet Mars and the Martians.” ‘Hear that?’ And then he read on, slipping in his own comments, as he always did: “The Martians do not eat meat, but use mam-moths as beasts of burden. Their horses are no larger than our ponies.” As large as our ponies – what ponies? “Their oxen are smaller – in other words, we have larger oxen, and so where we are, if you’re an ox, you’re a big ox – and have just one horn. The Martians have very pen-et-rat-ive eyesight. They have learned how to fly, but only for short distances. They walk on water with the same ease as they do on land. War has been ab-ol-ished on Mars. The Government is the-o-crat-ic. They have twelve states. They have no private property.” Then I’m not going to Mars. This is my country here, my private property, my house, my garden, my wife, my pigeons, and my plum trees,’ said the doorman, folding up the newspaper thus ending all discussion, having been fully enlightened as to the Martians.’
Life Begins On Friday Page 1
